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01/05/2016

Emerging embedded hardware requirements are stirring up competition for motherboards and integrated systems while driving demand for more IoT-related systems integration services.

The global markets for embedded boards and integrated computer systems will see growing competition over the next five years, according to a new report by VDC Research (click here to learn more). The embedded hardware space is vast, continually evolving, and extremely fragmented with larger organizations often supplying several different board and/or system form factors as well as potentially a variety of SKUs featuring different configurations thereof. Systems integration services, in turn, are benefiting from the growing complexity of modern (connected) embedded systems and are seeing greater use for IoT designs.

“Complacency now will seriously hamstring the long-term development and growth potential for all embedded hardware players,” says VDC analyst Daniel Mandell. “Ramping requirements for processing performance, footprint, and scalability are forcing embedded hardware suppliers to adapt and adopt to new product form factors such as MicroATX, VPX, and xITX. Some more mature hardware form factors like ATCA will continue to see slight growth through the next five years, though new organic revenue generating opportunities for incumbent suppliers will be scarce and increasingly challenged by alternative architectures.”

For small-form-factor embedded systems, computer-on-modules (COMs) have emerged as a convenient solution for enabling cost-effective hardware flexibility. While a variety of COM standards have fragmented the market, some form factors such as COM Express and Qseven are expected to see strong market growth. Kontron is the longstanding frontrunner of the embedded COMs space, having pioneered the concept. Unlike COMs, the global market for PC/104 family modules is expected to remain relatively stagnant through the next five years as suppliers look to adopt newer and more heterogeneous form factors like EPIC.

The market share leaders for embedded integrated systems have focused their recent acquisitions and collaborations on facilitating software development and enabling broader industry application support. The potential acquisition of EMC Corporation by Dell could produce a new leader in the embedded integrated systems market. HP Enterprise has made some dramatic acquisitions in 2015 to expand its portfolio of LAN offerings and help its customers transition to hybrid cloud environments. To remain competitive with new and traditional market players, embedded systems suppliers must bolster their support and development offerings for more of the solution stack.

09/26/2013

The
winds of change are blowing through the embedded computer board and module
market. As 2014 approaches, recent market consolidations and reorganizations
will solidify. 2013 will go down as one of the most important years for
suppliers to make their voices heard by VDC. Why is this so important? In 2014
and beyond there will be significant shifts in demand for embedded board and
module products as seen by these results from VDC's 2013 survey.

Many OEM engineers will be designing their new products and,
for the first time they will be using embedded modules as opposed to other
product alternatives. At the same time, existing module users will be looking to migrate
to the latest x86, ARM and/or FPGA processors and module types. These OEM
engineers will value an authoritative 3rd party source to better allow them
to determine which product types are strongly supported and, which product
types not gain the necessary market traction. On a similar note,
these OEM engineers and other entities with interest in the embedded market are
looking to VDC to determine which suppliers are becoming the most resilient, innovative,
and successful in the markets they serve. VDC provides this industry-wide guidance by
taking a 360 degree view of the market but, even so, the supplier inputs we receive are, among the
most valuable.

At present, VDC has been in contact with over 90
suppliers we believe are significant to the market and after many initial
discussions have provided our top-level estimates for their company. We are
following these e-mails and calls with our 2013 survey that has detailed
estimates. If you have NOT received these e-mails, calls and survey and, you
believe your company should be represented, please contact us immediately. If
you have received this survey it MUST be received by Friday October 4 to ensure
any corrections or fresh guidance are included in the VDC models that drive our
reports.

09/09/2013

We expect the September 4th fire at a Hynix semiconductor fab producing
DRAMs to adversely impact suppliers of embedded products. The perception of a possible
supply disruption for DRAMs has already affected pricing. Although Hynix is
downplaying the event, the likely affect will be somewhere between a temporary
shortage and a larger industry impact that some investors are predicting.
Suffice it to say that the potential mix between a cleanroom and “thick black
smoke” would be disrupting, even if the equipment was not obviously damaged. It
is possible that materials and surfaces in some parts of the facility were
contaminated. If so, the effects of semiconductor or electronic circuit board contamination
may take months or even years to appear and this would have two possible impacts:

Some of the Hynix production equipment may
become less reliable, which can impact supply.

Some of the components Hynix produces at that
facility may have higher failure rates, particularly over the longer time
frames in which embedded computers are deployed.

Whether either of these two possibilities will actually
happen may be immaterial as embedded board and system suppliers are a cautious
bunch who may choose to lock in supplies of DRAM products from alternative suppliers.

08/27/2013

Technologies are evolving quickly in 3D printing and new
nano-materials. Will these new technologies impact the market for embedded
computing products? We believe the answer is, yes, but, not immediately. The 3D
printing process is too slow for the production volumes needed for many if not
most products that contain embedded computing. The first embedded market impact
of new 3D and nano technologies will be on the engineering processes that
create products not the products themselves.

Is the concept of printing electronic circuits new? Not in
the slightest. When I first began my engineering career in the late 70s, the
company I worked for produced laser trim systems. These systems were used by
customers to measure and perfectly adjust the resistors on ceramic modules that
had been printed using a silk screen printing process.

Exhibit 1: Screen Printed Thick Film Ceramic Module

After process steps for printing the circuit traces and
resistive components, the laser system would then be used to make continual
measurements as laser pulses cut into the resistive material. This would
increase the resistance until it met the target value. Prior to laser
technology, this same task would have used a sand blast method. In either case,
the modules would be completed by adding semiconductor dies and encapsulating
the module.

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are not really printed as much
as they are plated and etched. Because of the density and complex circuits
multiple layers are usually required. PCBs like the 70’s era ceramic modules
require significant manpower and expense to design and layout the circuits and
then create the necessary screens and photo masks needed to produce the
product. Even with all the automated tools that engineers can utilize, this PCB
development process can take a significant amount of time. If the first
articles produced are found to have problems, a re-spin adds more
time-to-market delay. It is worth noting that the equipment needed to create
PCBs and embedded modules are expensive and therefore most companies rely on
contract manufacturing specialists to produce them.

The same pictured module could be produced using a 3D
printer either on top of ceramic or, perhaps, using another material as a
substrate. The base might even be flexible, allowing the finished product to be
more adaptable. By precisely controlling the amount of resistive material, a
trimming process could possibly be eliminated. Even capacitors could, (in
theory), be printed.

Most importantly, a small engineering team could be testing
a prototype of a new embedded computer product within hours of developing it. Production
of the verified design would still be completed by the aforementioned contract
manufacturers, but the time-to-market would be more compressed and there would
far less uncertainty about having to make engineering corrections. At a
minimum, the ability to rapidly produce prototypes and proof-of-concept
products can level the playing field for smaller less capitalized embedded
computer suppliers.

In the distant future, as 3D printing capabilities and speed
increase along with the development of nano materials that can be used as “ink”,
embedded hardware may take on an entire new meaning. Consider an automotive
part like a bumper that was manufactured with all of the electronics needed for
a collision avoidance system completely embedded in the bumper’s material. As
the bumper is printed, the circuit traces and components could be printed or picked
and placed. Is this printing/embedded process feasible today? No, but like
previous disruptive technologies its time will come.

What should embedded suppliers do now? As 3D and material
technologies start to mature and stabilize, suppliers should begin to use 3D
printing to produce prototypes of embedded sub-modules. This exercise should be
conducted in parallel with traditional processes to test if and when time to
market compression exists. When the new technologies are proven, suppliers can
confidently develop new products because they will know that the engineering prototypes
they produce will be reliable proxies for their completed products.

05/03/2013

In this blog we will continue to provide a few more highlights
from the suppliers we spoke to at the 2013 DESIGN WEST / Embedded Systems
Conference that was held last week in San Jose.

Small Form Factor
Motherboards: At the VersaLogic booth we were shown several of their new small
form factor motherboards, including the EBX format Copperhead that is powered
by an Intel i7 processor and can support up to 3 independent displays. We also
saw their COM Express Mini format Falcon and EPIC format Iguana that are powered
by Intel Atom processors. The Iguana boards have a Mini PCIe card socket that
allows an OEM to round out its configuration with a wide array of connectivity,
storage, and other options. All of the Versalogic products we saw at the show
were designed for extremely high reliability in operating temperatures that
extend from -40C to +85C, and many of them can be ordered in Class 3 assembly versions
for mission critical applications.

Computers-on-Modules (COMs):
At the congatec booth we saw the variety of COM product lines they offer
including Qseven, COM Express, ETX, and XTX. If customers require high power
COMs in passive cooling configurations, congatec has patented spring loaded
heatspreader thermal interfaces that pull heat away from chipset components and
transfer it to the edge of the module. Depending on the OEM application, many
of the congatec Qseven products can be ordered with x86 processors from AMD and
Intel or ARM processors from Freescale.

Development
Platforms: At the ST Micro booth we visited with Ayla Networks who were demonstrating
their proof-of-concept secure M2M cloud connectivity solutions with the STM32
F3 evaluation platforms representing connectivity targets. We expect to hear
more from Ayla in the future, and you will likely be reading about them in our
blog. At the Texas Instruments booth we were shown the new BeagleBoard Black
open-source development platform. This impressive unit sells for only $45, and
has a 1 GHz ARM A8 processor, 512MB of DDR3 RAM memory, and an on-board HDMI.
The BeagleBoard can be expanded for multiple applications by using BeagleBone
“capes”. There were multiple applications highlighted, including a remotely
controlled electro-mechanical spider that had been fabricated using 3D printed
parts.

Ultra Low Power MCUs:
We noted that ST Micro had won an EE Times / EDN ACE Award for its Fully-Depleted
Silicon-on-Insulator (FD-SOI) technology that allows devices to run using 20 –
50% less power. On a similar note, Renesas was demonstrating the power sipping
ability of its RX111 group of MCUs that can wake up in 4.8us from a sleep mode,
where it only consumes 350nA. In addition, the RX111 has 6 safety functions to
verify/ensure that the device and supporting circuitry are working properly.

Industrial SATA III
SSD: The VDC team met with Innodisc and learned about their new SATA III
line of Flash Storage Products targeted at embedded applications in the
industrial market. These Innodisc
products use arrays of lower-cost Multi-Layer Cell (MLC) memory chips to
duplicate Single-Layer Cell performance and reliability at a significantly
lower price point.

Embedded Certainty:
At the XMOS booth we learned about their series of MCUs that were designed to
remove uncertainty from critical applications. This means that programs can be
developed where the signal timing is completely predictable. Roughly stated,
the XMOS MCU have removed I/O layers and other elements that create signal
latency or processing variables that can affect timing. There are many
applications such as digital audio and collision avoidance that can benefit
from MCUs with predictable timing.

Embedded Motherboards:
As the VDC EHW team is currently in the midst of our supply-side coverage of
the embedded motherboard market, we were particularly interested in seeing the
two new SuperMicro X9DR products. Both of these units were extremely powerful
and can be used in applications that require power-efficient processing of high
volumes of data. SuperMicro also sells its products into the traditional IT
space and, as such, has some system options that can be attractive to OEMs
supporting mission critical applications. These include built in
Uninterruptible Power Supply and automatic flash memory backup of system RAM
and CPU processes in the event of a power outage.

Stay tuned for part 3 where we will wrap up our observations
from the 2013 Design West show.

04/11/2013

An interesting opportunity for embedded hardware suppliers
caught the attention of the VDC M2M Embedded Platform team. The opportunity was
highlighted in a Boston Globe article this week about a local police department
that equipped a cruiser with a $28K Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) unit.
There were a number of eye-popping statistics starting with the fact that the
unit apparently paid for itself in the first 11 days it was deployed. The ROI
was accomplished from revenues generated by identifying vehicles and drivers
with expired licenses, registrations, inspections, or other unpaid fines and
fees. ALPRs can also be used for parking enforcement particularly
in areas where civilian officials want to encourage shoppers with low cost short
interval parking spaces. In this parking application, an official uses an ALPR to detect commuters and/or store workers
that try to take advantage of the potential arbitrage and fine them.

Now let’s look at the $28K bundle of embedded hardware and
software and speculate a bit on what is likely to be involved. The ALPR cited
by the Boston Globe had the capability to read 1,800 license plates per minute
and cover 4 lanes of traffic simultaneously. It can make those readings at
differential speeds of up to 150 mph. This is a key factor because the unit is
mounted on a cruiser as opposed to a parking or toll-taking lane where only the
vehicle would be moving and the zone where the license plate would be is more
predictable. Therefore there has to be a camera system capable of capturing a
wide field at varying focal lengths and light conditions. The torrent of data
from the camera system has to be rapidly processed to identify license plates
and simultaneously perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on 4 or more plates
in the field of view. Additionally, the system has to identify the state that
issued the plate. This is challenging because many states like Massachusetts
issue multiple types of specialty plates for sports teams and other
organizations or causes. States also control costs by not replacing license
plates until they practically fall apart. Therefore, it is fairly safe to say
that there would be approximately $10K in optics and high performance
processing inside the ALPR to accomplish the OCR function.

What happens next is important. We are going to make an
assumption and it is a big one. We will assume that the ALPR generates data that
supports law enforcement but this data will not be a cornerstone for court
cases. This means that the raw video would not need to be compressed and stored
for future reference while preserving chain of custody. For example, if the
ALPR were going to be used for moving traffic or criminal violations it would
need to have irrefutable video evidence that identified the driver as well as
speed measurement data. Because of our limited OCR assumption, the captured
data only needs to be combined with time stamps, GPS coordinates and, perhaps a
few operational parameters. As a result, this limited data set would be in the
order of kbytes per record as opposed to Mbytes per second for full video
archiving. Even so, this still represents several thousands of dollars per ALPR
unit for the additional embedded sensing, processing, storage, HMI and
communication hardware.

In our estimate, the next part of the ALPR application would
optimally involve cloud-based Big Data resources. The ALPR would transmit
captured data in real time and processed for matches in multiple databases. The
response back to the police cruiser would have to be rapid to be effective. The
most effective ALPR supporting infrastructure would have to combine data from
all municipalities, states, and federal agencies relevant to a particular
region. Suffice it to say, the cloud-based and communication services could
easily amount to several hundred dollars per month for each ALPR deployed.

The Boston Globe article stated that there were
already 87 ALPRs deployed in the state with another 7 Boston area police
departments adding 21 additional in the next month. Considering that
Massachusetts alone has over 350 cities and towns but the entire US represents
over 36,000 municipalities, the potential market for ALPRs and the embedded hardware inside
them would appear to be a huge and rapidly growing opportunity.

09/11/2012

There's still time to connect with the VDC Research Embedded Hardware & Software team at the ESC show next week but the coveted time-slots on Tuesday are rapidly being taken. If you believe you have a new product that qualifies for one of the VDC embeddy awards contact us as soon as possible as at least one member of the VDC team needs to see the product demo/briefing during or before the show. The winners will be notified on Tuesday evening and announced just before Wednesday's keynote speech.

The VDC team will be at the show site starting on Monday and, of course we can also schedule meetings on Wednesday as well.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Hardware, please contact:

08/27/2012

VDC Research Group will be joining the Design East/Embedded Systems
Conference 2012 exhibition and conference. During the conference, we
will be presenting the coveted VDC Embeddy awards to a deserving product
in the software and hardware categories. To make sure your
product is considered, please make sure that:

The product is formally announced at the show or, has been announced as of August, 2012

That the VDC Research team will be briefed on the details of the product by your show staff.

Note: The Embeddys will be presented before Wednesday's keynote address. Therefore the briefings need to be completed by the evening of Tuesday September 18th.

VDC’s Embedded Hardware Team will be available at the show starting Monday September 17th and will be
at the conference through the 19th. During that time, we welcome the
opportunity to connect with attending vendors. We look forward to
explaining VDC’s research methodology, learning about your latest
product releases, and discussing your market research and strategic
needs.

07/24/2012

A couple of weeks ago, an interesting press release appeared in my Inbox, announcing that Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions (CWCDS) was introducing a new version of their VPX6-490 DSP board, which utilizes dual NVIDIA GPGPU MXM modules and NVIDIA’s Fermi architecture. Besides the fact that this board appears to have extraordinary capabilities, this new version also utilizes Northrop Grumman’s air-flow-through (AFT) cooling technology, which CWCDS was the first to license. This is also, in my opinion, a valid and exciting technological development, providing superior cooling while protecting sensitive components from potentially damaging contaminants in the ambient air. The board release announcement was dated June 28, 2012; the press release announcing the license arrangement was dated April 19, 2012.

Being curious, I decided to poke around a bit and learn more about this AFT technology. I downloaded Northrop Grumman’s patent no. 7,995,436 (click on “Images” to see the drawings), and stumbled on something that gave me pause.

Bear in mind that I am not a patent professional. However, in my career I have been sole or co-inventor on 17 US patents, and thus have been involved in the process and have seen some of its pitfalls.

A Hole in the Patent?

In the Disclosure of the Invention section of the patent, which appears in Column 2 of page 15, the patent reads “…at least one removable module…” (for example, board) “…electrically or electro-optically coupled with the base unit…” (for example, backplane). No problem here. However, in the Abstract, which appears on page 1, and in the claims which appear on pages 18 and 19, the “electrically coupled” option has been omitted. All of the independent claims (Claims 1, 8 and 16) stipulate that the boards (I’m using my own “layman’s” terms here to avoid getting bogged down in the legalese) are “electro-optically coupled” to the backplane. To my knowledge (and I checked into this to be sure) electro-optical coupling is accomplished through the use of light sources (today, LEDs) and photoreceptors or photocells of some sort. Fiber optics, as in VITA 66, could also provide the proper coupling. Any of these would necessitate use of a special backplane rather than the “conventional” VPX types.

Further perusal of the Disclosure of the Invention failed to find any additional mention of the coupling means, be they electrical or electro-optical. I can’t see any reason why AFT would not work with electrically coupled boards and backplanes as well as with those that are electro-optically coupled.

I can envision two scenarios which may explain the omission of the “electrically coupled” option in the patent claims. The first is that this was a mistake, that the electrically coupled option had been dropped inadvertently. The second is that it was deliberately omitted in a response to a PTO Office Action, probably a “103 rejection” (where the invention is deemed by the Examiner to be “obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art”). In a response to this type of Office Action (which is very common), patent attorneys often limit the claims in order to further differentiate the invention from the prior art.

Possible Impact on the Participants

Now the big question is just how this will impact Curtiss-Wright and Northrop Grumman. As I stated above, I’m not a patent professional; the following are my opinions only, and the situation should be sorted out by the attorneys of the parties involved.

I should state here that this issue has no negative impact whatsoever upon the technical merits of either CWCDS’ product or Northrop Grumman’s AFT technology. Any impact would be legal and, perhaps, financial.

In either of the scenarios that I outlined above, the use of AFT technology in CDCDS’ boards is not prohibited even if electrical, rather than electro-optical, coupling is used. However, electrically coupled boards are, in my opinion, not protected under the patent. Curtiss-Wright has gained technical support and relevant expertise from Northrop Grumman through the license, but has not gained any real degree of protection for the cooling technology except in the case of electro-optically coupled devices. I’m not certain whether a court would uphold royalty payments to Northrop Grumman under the license if AFT were to be used on electrically coupled board and backplane combinations. Again, that’s for the lawyers to sort out.

In the first instance mentioned above, wherein the omission was inadvertent, I do not believe that CWCDS would have any unexpected financial exposure. However, under the second instance, where the omission was deliberate, the story may be a bit more complicated.

I have not looked at any of the prior art at all. Forty patents are listed as cited references; twenty-three of these were cited by the Examiner (the cited patents have some relevance to the patentability of the invention; the others listed are for the purpose of providing background). It is possible that one of the cited patents dominates the Northrop Grumman patent, meaning that it discloses a cooling method substantially similar to AFT. In that case the electrically coupled option may have been intentionally dropped from the claims in order to provide differentiation, and thereby make the AFT invention patentable. It is then possible that CWCDS, if they use AFT on electrically coupled boards, may be bordering on infringing this earlier patent, and thus it is conceivable that they may have some financial liability. I would suspect that, in this case, CWCDS would be held harmless and the liability assumed by Northrop Grumman because of their failure to adequately disclose that their patent didn’t cover electrically coupled devices and that another did, but one never knows. In any case it appears to me that it’s time for the lawyers. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.

02/24/2012

VDC Research Group will be joining the Design West/Embedded Systems Conference 2012 exhibition and conference. During the conference, we will be presenting the coveted VDC Embeddy awards to a deserving product in each of the 2 software and hardware categories. To make sure your product is considered, please make sure that:

The product is formally announced at the show or, has been announced as of January, 2012

That the VDC Research team will be briefed on the details of the product by your show staff.

VDC’s Embedded Hardware Team will be arriving March 27th and will be at the conference through March 29th. During that time, we welcome the opportunity to connect with attending vendors. We look forward to explaining VDC’s research methodology, learning about your latest product releases, and discussing your market research and strategic needs.